Writer Nathan Louis Jackson’s legacy is growing K-State’s next generation of talent
Award-winning playwright Nathan Jackson, a graduate of K-State’s and Juilliard’s theater programs, left his mark on American comedy and drama. His creative output covered everything from off-Broadway plays to a Marvel superhero series.
He won two of American theater’s coveted writing prizes: the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award (he won twice). “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail staged two Jackson plays at Lincoln Center — not bad for a guy who said he flunked high school English.
When Jackson died at age 44, Kail and others honored him by setting up a fund to bring K-State theater students to New York City to see the latest productions and learn from pros across the theater spectrum.
Accolades on stage
Jackson’s first attempts at writing came as a member of K-State’s forensics team. He said the acting repertoire for Black actors was limited, so he started writing his own monologues. He won three national championships in prose and poetry interpretation.
He also taught acting to elementary students at Manhattan Arts Center.
“Kids just don’t understand ‘What’s my motivation?’” he said at the time. “So we do a lot of games and improv. You get to act silly and actually learn something!”
His “The Last Black Play,” staged by K-State’s historic Ebony Theatre, was selected for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Washington, D.C.
Jackson’s play “Broke-ology” premiered while he was still a grad student at Juilliard and opened a year later at Lincoln Center.
The play tells the story of a Black family in Kansas City, Kansas — where Jackson grew up — caring for its ailing father. One character jokes that he has a degree in “broke-ology,” the science of being broke. Cool fact: The earliest version of “Broke-ology,” then called “Mancherios,” debuted at K-State’s Purple Masque Theatre.
Although he was active in the NYC theater world, Jackson maintained Midwestern roots. He served as playwright-in-residence at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre from 2013 to 2019.
And on screen
Over the past decade he built up his TV credits, writing episodes for “13 Reasons Why,” “Resurrection,” “S.W.A.T.” and “Shameless.”
He was an executive story editor for Marvel’s “Luke Cage,” a series about a former convict with superpowers. He described it as a “superhero show but told from a Black standpoint.”
As a K-State student, making it big in the arts was only a dream.
“I understand that it’s a hard business to get into,” he told the Collegian in 2001. “But I want in if I can crack it at any angle: acting, writing, directing or possibly even teaching.”
